Wind ruffles the reeds
Soft ripples carry the swans
As we walk upstream.
Category: Poetry
Sonnet for a Peach.
The leaves a gentle yellow, dappled still
With green; the evening a deep’ning blue,
With dizzy silver faces peeking through
All thrumming drunk on sunset’s rosy thrill.
Each brush of night exceeding daylight’s skill,
Dull beams yet catch this undiminished hue:
The peaches’ dusky blush does shade eschew,
And soaks instead what August overfills.
Like lover’s hand, familiar, the palm
Enfolds that tender sphere: that fragrant skin,
Those juices sweet! The heady taste of calm:
To sunlight caught in curtain folds akin,
To reverent draw of breath when singing psalms —
Abundant peace: all summer revels in.
Sunday, May 17th
Conversation washes over the room.
Windows of grey sky, rainy morning eyes,
Sweet bottom dregs: a mug of tea,
Wool socks over tucked-in-toes,
Stories stacked in crooked piles.
Cold water washes over the stones.
Shrouded in grey sky, rainy morning peaks,
Sweet ripples spread: a swelling lake,
Wet docks under barefoot steps;
Trees stretch up in crooked spires.
The First Days of summer
A largeness fills us in the first days of summer:
Hearts expand like helium balloons,
Swelling to carry the giddy adjustment
Of hours added on to days,
Of stamped-gravel-texture on bare knees and shins,
Fingers first coloured in the pastel prints of creation
When all the ground beneath your feet
Becomes a rippling canvas.
Sweat beads form tide pools in the crevices of your skin,
Like there is an ocean inside of you,
Crashing up and spilling over the backs of you legs
And the jagged crest of shoreline that is your collar bone
To cool and salt the sand that burns golden all over you;
To leave adventures swimming
Like so many little fish–
Colourful and iridescent in the rocks–
Carried on the wave of the first days of summer.
Afternoon Library
Sunlight dishes out its rays in perfectly even portions:
Squares that melt into thick-grained-wood;
The bookshelves in the stacks
Inhale the dust-mote fragrance of shine.
Shelves with curving vertebras,
Heavy with bindings of breathing stories
Held not like a burden,
Not a burden but a poem:
Weight like words at the threshold of speech
Where faded colours of ancient books
Are the endless tongues and lips and teeth.
Innumerable organs, each shelf like lungs,
Are shaping the vowels of Peace,
Tasting the solid consonants of Knowledge,
The pursed kiss of Purpose,
Sighing out the sounds of Hush
And Whisper.
Given breath in pages and ink,
I can hear their voices
Saying thank you to the sunlight
In the solitude and silence
Of the afternoon library.
Soft Beginning
Yellow leaves in November breezes,
Twirling along the first snowfall of winter:
If only for an evening, if only for an hour
You’ll walk alongside the visible tread of time.
There is a beginning glimmering
In the end of fertile seasons;
There is a softness spreading
In veins of ice, like open palms
Covering familiar ponds:
Their ripples stilled at slightest touch.
Swirled at the bottom, in the dregs of the year,
Landed lightly on frozen earth
Despite the V of fleeing birds:
A soft beginning.
And it reaches you in humble ways,
Like tentative wind through tiny holes in knit sweaters
Like the faintest memory of childhood houses:
You’ll see the lights all over again
Hung in half forgotten windows
Framing the refrain
Of your mother’s favourite Christmas song
And the simple words you used to write:
In windows and fog of your innocent breath,
Disappearing when daylight came again.
In all that’s past
And all that’s ended
A soft beginning, mingling.
Mackenzie Lee 